Picture it: The Oregon State Beavers as the nation's No. 1 team next month. Don't believe us? Matt Hayes spells out how the season could play out to that result, and if it does, how mass chaos will re-inhabit the BCS rankings.

1. I don’t want to get on a soapbox but …

Let me take you back in time, everyone, to a place of mass hysteria not so long ago. To a moment when chaos ruled and a team that lost on the last weekend of the regular season made it to the BCS National Championship Game. And won.

You didn’t think you were getting off this easy, did you? Didn’t really think the final two years of this perfectly imperfect BCS contraption would go quietly while giving way to a system they’re selling as a “playoff.”

Let me reintroduce the 2007 season. Because 2012 is beginning to look a lot like that wild, wonderful trip down the rabbit hole.

“It’s the first week (of the BCS poll),” says Oregon coach Chip Kelly. “A lot can happen between now and the end of the (regular) season.”

How much, you ask? Every team—of significance—will have one loss by the time that BCS computer system cranks up for the last Sunday this season.

If (when) those seven lose, other one-loss teams then join the fun of the BCS system finding two spots from multiple teams. If it’s anything like 2007, have the Tylenol ready.

Five years ago, Missouri and West Virginia went into championship week ranked Nos. 1 and 2, respectively. By the end of the day, Oklahoma wiped out Missouri and WVU lost to Pitt. That opened the door for one-loss Ohio State and two-loss LSU—which had lost a week earlier to Arkansas before beating Tennessee in the SEC Championship Game—to play for it all.

Strange things happen when life becomes win and advance. Teams lose games they shouldn’t—and underdogs become overachievers. Seven-loss Pitt had no business winning in Morgantown in 2007, and especially with coach Dave Wannstedt squarely on the proverbial hot seat.

But Wannstedt went all-in, anyway—bringing freshmen who were redshirting to the game to shake up a struggling team by stressing unity. Had Pitt lost (and lost big as many predicted), Wannstedt says some of those freshmen would have transferred.

“We were either going to win,” Wannstedt said, “or we were going down in flames.”

Remember that as the Surviving Seven continue their weekly quest, desperately trying to stay unbeaten. And running a race most, if not all, will lose.

By those results—are you ready for this?—Oregon State will be the nation’s No. 1 team going into the second week in November.

How about that for chaos?

Mack Brown (AP Photo)

4. The Long and Short of it

Mack Brown went and did it. Whether he likes it or not, he looked a whole lot like Bobby Bowden earlier this week when he declared he wouldn’t retire.

“I have my energy,” Brown said. “I’m moving forward and we are darn sure going to get this thing fixed.”

Those words follow this mess: Texas is 17-14 since losing to Alabama in the 2009 BCS National Championship Game, with eight of those losses by double digits. Oklahoma hung 60-plus (again) on the Longhorns last weekend, the ninth straight loss to a ranked team for Texas under Brown.

The defense is so bad (99 out of 120 in the nation) it makes the offense—which has made huge strides this fall—guilty by association. This team can’t win big games, and is falling further away from the elite of the second-best conference in the game.

Bowden’s slippage also began after a loss in the BCS Championship Game; the 2000 game against Oklahoma. Bowden won an ACC championship in 2005 (with a five-loss team), but never came close to returning the 'Noles to the nation’s elite—and was doing so in the fifth-best BCS conference.

That, more than anything, makes this situation drastically different. The Big 12 will only get better. The ACC got worse as FSU got worse.

“I’m way too competitive and have way too much pride to leave something bad,” Brown said.

So was Bowden.

Bill O'Brien (AP Photo)

5. The Weekly Five

Five reasons Penn State’s Bill O’Brien already has earned coach of the year in my book:

1. He’s winning games with a quarterback who wouldn’t start for 90 percent of FBS schools.

2. He has never once has blamed the past for the present.

3. He has healed a fractured fan base, and has everyone focused on what’s ahead—not the sickness left behind. Through four home games, PSU’s average attendance is 96,365.

4. The Lions are down to third- and fourth-string tailbacks, yet the offensive balance (234 runs, 229 passes) remains.

5. If Silas Redd didn’t leave State College for USC, Penn State is unbeaten and the story of the season.

Tajh Boyd (AP Photo)

6. ACC vs. Big East

The highest-ranked ACC team in the six computer polls is Clemson at No. 22 (Billingsley).

Three Big East teams (Rutgers, Louisville, Cincinnati) are ranked higher in the six computer polls 14 times. Boise State, joining the Big East in 2013, is ranked higher than Clemson in four of the six computer polls.

This whole ACC is better than the Big East thing? Still not seeing it.

Nor are the computer dorks.

So I’ve got that going for me.

Mike Leach (AP Photo)

7. Punishment, Palouse style

Leach, and his ever-enlightening stream of consciousness.
It began with the introduction of safety Casey Locker, cousin of former Washington star Jake Locker. It continued with an interesting view of what could be for Wazzu receivers this week in practice.

“I may have (Locker) hammer on some of our receivers,” Leach told local reporters. “For example, we’ll throw them a ball and just as the ball’s ready to get there, we’ll have Casey Locker slaughter them. I haven’t ruled that out.”

8. Big Orange fallout

Dave Hart played basketball at Alabama in the 1970s, and is one of the most competitive athletic directors in the business.
Who can forget Hart calling out then-Florida coach Steve Spurrier in 2001, when Spurrier complained (again) about dirty play from FSU players. Hart, then AD at FSU, said: “It would probably be good if somebody just spanked (Spurrier) and put him to bed, and hope he wakes up all grown up.”

Now imagine Hart, the Tennessee AD, evaluating Vols coach Derek Dooley on a weekly basis. The Vols are a complete mess under Dooley, and now the Third Saturday in October is here, and the biggest game on the schedule has arrived—and it’s against Hart’s alma mater, no less.

The subject of players and recruiting is broached at Dooley’s weekly press conference, and Dooley, already all but canned, releases this gem:

“They draft, we recruit,” Dooley said. “And they get the first 25 picks in the draft.”

Yeah, that’s what ultra-competitive Dave Hart wants to hear.
Time for bed, Derek.

At least Hart will get a good, long look this weekend at his next coach: Tide defensive coordinator Kirby Smart.

Al Golden (AP Photo)

9. The blame game

So Al Golden said earlier this week that building a program isn’t as easy as you’d think—especially when players are hearing it from outside the safe walls of the message.

In other words—you guessed it—when in doubt, blame the media.

“It’s tough to build a program with the bricks people throw at you,” Golden said on a Miami radio show. “I can tell by the line of questioning what’s going on, and it’s got to carry down to your team.”

If we go on that theory, Miami’s complete meltdown since former coach Larry Coker’s final season can be traced to the sickos in the media always looking for the negative.

Because since that 2006 season, one that included Miami players fighting FIU players on the field during a game, the Canes are 45-38 overall and 26-27 in the ACC. Take away wins against FCS schools, and Miami is 39-38 under Coker, Randy Shannon and Golden.

That’s one powerful media machine. That, or Miami hasn’t had a defensive lineman of significance since the early 2000s.